I thought at one point that I wanted to be a critic. It was (get ready for big laffs) right after I took ENG 601 - "Introduction to Literary Criticism." Now, five or six years later, I think I'm coming to realize that it's not for me.
Renata Adler, who was a book critic, author, and revolutionary badass in the 70's, was quoted in an interview in Vice magazine talking about one of the ugly problems of writing today -- she said, "I've actually met some great young writers... [but] They've never read anything. I remember saying at
the beginning of the year, when I taught at Boston University, 'Is there
anything you all have read?'"
And the answer is no, of course, because comprehensive literacy is hard and getting harder. A century ago, somebody made up a list of books that purported to be the greatest hits of all the literature needed in the Western World. You could read that list, manage to comprehend it, and any liberal arts education would be a waste of money after that. The list was published as a collection and people bought it, apparently not ironically, so I assume this was a proposition that could be presented in front of people who would not laugh you out of the room then. I can't imagine taking it seriously today. Adler, for instance, wouldn't have made the list, and then where would you be?
(Adler, by the way, wrote one of the most crushing book reviews I've ever read, about one of her co-workers at The New Yorker. The great quote from it, "and it is, to my surprise and without... exaggeration,
not simply, jarringly, piece by piece, line by line, and without
interruption, worthless," makes you so glad you've never written anything that she has read.)
No, I'd never heard of her before tonight, either. And I don't consider myself culturally illiterate. But how do you cover everything? How do you cover everything from last week?
There's more quality, valuable literature being produced today, and in the past 100 years, than at any time in the history of the world, almost certainly because there are more people with thorough liberal arts educations than at any time in the history of the world. And I should emphasize that I don't necessarily mean formal or strict liberal art educations -- if you read every romance novel you could get your hands on for two or three years, you'd have read more books by more professional authors than the entire population of the planet Earth read in some years in history. And if you wrote based solely on that, maybe with a few how-to guides on the internet or motivational TED talks, you could just as easily turn out a novel that would have been a best-seller in 1930. If you were lucky, you could turn out Fifty Shades of Gray. (E.L. James studied history in college, didn't start writing till her mid-30's, and has sold 100 million copies of her books in the past four years. Those books aren't for me, but it's just silly to say they aren't important literature today.)
Criticism seems like a fun job; you're basically reviewing stuff you're reading, and you were going to be reading anyway. But criticism is about drawing connections, defining a literary dialogue, identifying connections in this work to themes in that work, allusions to this other thing, and shout-outs to the classics.
And I'm coming to realize that I'm never reading all the classics. I've had at least one copy of the Bible for 35 years now; I still have the one they gave me the first time I got baptized (more than a quarter century ago). Never read the thing. I mean, I've read parts, but never the whole thing. Same for Les Miserables, or Don Quijote de la Mancha, or Ivanhoe, or Ana Karenina. How can I write a review on something and say, "Wow, that scene in the middle where the guy kept referring to derpy windmills was pretty lame," and not realize I missed a reference to Don Quijote? I would have people cancelling their subscriptions. I would have people calling the paper and ordering a subscription, just so they could immediately cancel it.
So I think I'm going to do what I have been doing, occasionally writing a review for something I really like on Amazon, and staying fairly incognito. And I'm going to write, and I might even publish, and maybe some poor hapless fool will review me some day.
Brave heart. Better him than me...
